Talks are due to start next week between the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) and the international shipping community on the prickly subject of paying for a widened waterway when it opens in 2015.
Panama Canal Authority administrator, Jorge Quijano, told The Loadstar that he would arrive in London next week to meet with the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) as part of the ACP’s policy of consultation with the industry ahead of any future toll increases.
At the centre of discussions will be the issue of tolls post-2015, when the ACP is scheduled to finish its $5.25bn expansion programme.
A key element of the ACP’s future pricing strategy, Quijano revealed, would be a price differential between using the new mega-locks – capable of handling 13,000 teu vessels – and the cost of using the original locks, constructed nearly a hundred years ago.
Price differentiation would be necessary, he said, to ensure the canal’s original facilities continue to be attractive to operators of smaller vessels and to prevent older infrastructure becoming obsolete overnight.
“We would have to [differentiate] otherwise everyone will just want to use the new locks. At the end of the day somebody has to pay for this,” he said.
ICS secretary general Peter Hinchcliffe told The Loadstar that carriers were not just concerned about the cost structure, but also how the ACP would manage a two-stream canal capability and how slots would be allocated on the expanded corridor.
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Source: The Load Star
